Category / Thinking & Musing

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Toddler Logic

My daughter showed me a leaflet with five very different monsters on it.

R: “Which one do you like best?”
Me: “That yellow one.”
R: “No, that’s Daddy’s favourite.”
Me: “Okay, that orange one.”
R: “No, that’s my favourite.”
Me: “The green one?”
R: “No, that’s someone else’s favourite.”
Me: “How about blue?”
R: “No. That’s someone else’s favourite, too.”
Me: “Purple, then.”
R: “Yes.”
Me: “What if I like the purple one and the yellow one.”
R: “No! You can’t like two monsters at the same time!”
Me: “What if Daddy and I both like the yellow one best? I’m sure he won’t mind.”
R: “No! It’s Daddy’s favourite. Can you guess which one your favourite is?”
Me: “Purple?”
R: “Yes! Well done, Mummy.”

That taught me.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Out with the old…*

So, things are changing here at Goldstein Mountain. It’s really hard to believe, but in two weeks I will be hanging up my bright yellow logo for good, and heading off to join the team at TMW as a community manager.

I don’t really want to focus on what I will be doing yet as I haven’t started it and there’s a lot to take in and I will need time to adjust. But a brief look back at a little less than five years at Dogs Trust seems appropriate. Indeed, I could hardly stop myself.

Dogs Trust has been really key to me working out where I want to go. I arrived as a bewildered tech blogger, and am leaving as an experienced digital marketer who’s been allowed to experiment, learn and develop on the job, knowing for sure that I want to specialise more in social and communities. The amazing freedom and respect that the digital team has always been granted here has, I think, been the envy of various discussions held at NFP Tweetup and similar events. I’ve been proud to help contribute in my small way to the reputation for openness and forward thinking that Dogs Trust carries in the digital world.

I’ve been very privileged to work with two excellent digital bods, who will be friends for life. And though I needed to branch out and challenge myself and learn more, it is wonderful to leave with utter fondness and on a totally positive note.

I really think whoever nabs the currently available role in the digital team will be a very lucky person. It is not exactly my job as it is / was – a slightly restructure means it’ll be a bit more admin, and a bit less strategy – but for a junior marketer looking to take the next step, it’ll be a golden opportunity to make that leap in a supportive and fun environment.

A few fabulous memories I’ll be taking with me:

– Rehoming our first dog through Twitter

– Finally hearing that Bentley, a Canine Care Card dog whose first owner passed away and who was then returned to us due to his second owner’s illness, had settled into a loving home for good – thanks to a Facebook post.

– Speaking in front of a huge crowd of dedicated animal welfare professionals at ICAWC in Stresa, Italy, after only a few months in the job.

– Attending two Dogs Trust Honours award ceremonies.

Although I only have a couple of weeks left, I’m still leaping on every opportunity to be 100% involved until the last possible moment. I was chuffed that my first go at Vine for the charity got quite a bit of positive attention – feels like as good a parting shot as any! (And I just happened to brainstorm a load of other ideas and email them to people because I’m that kind of colleague.)

At the risk of sounding like Joey Tribbiani and his giving and receiving, the next fourteen days are going to be a lot about endings and beginnings. With all the strangeness, sadness, delight, excitement and confusion that come with them.

I can’t wait.

*I was going to call this “Winds of change…” but then I thought of The Scorpions and that song that was EVERYWHERE for one apparently endless Summer and whose opening lines (allegedly “I follow the Moskva down to Gorky Park”) actually sounded for all the world like “I follow demosquat, and down to Bonkly Ponk”. So… yeah.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

The 21st Century Begins…

I’m pretty much always sad that I’m not at Walt Disney World. But today has an extra element of bittersweet longing as it’s the thirtieth anniversary of the best theme park in the world, ever: EPCOT Center (okay, Epcot. And yes, even now,  with Horizons* gone and that ending to Spaceship Earth and no new countries for decades. Today, I have all of the love and I don’t care).

This is where, just two years after opening, I fell in love with Disney.  And it’s why it doesn’t matter how old I get, I will always feel like an excited child at those gates. For some people it’s Cinderella Castle; for me, it’ll always be that monolithic golf ball.

Happy birthday, Epcot. I miss you.

*Okay, guys, I know it can’t come back. I get it. But take that extraordinary immersion – that incredibly long, detailed and rich experience – and bring it back in another form. I’m okay with that. I dare you.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

2012 Social Charity 100 Index: Ooh!

I confess: I always feel a bit awkward about rankings.  A bit like scientific experiments, there is no perfect method. Every rating or ranking has to begin with a list of whos, wherefores and what’s wrongs. Inevitably, when it comes to social media, each attempt at ranking organisations has to place value on certain elements, which might or might not be what the participants were aiming at and placed value on themselves.

That said, all charity rankings are not created equal. Some come closer to calculations that make sense to me, combining follower size (reach) with follower growth (momentum) and fundraising (surely a good sign of an engaged community if they trust you enough to part with more cash over these most conversational of media). So it was interesting that Visceral Business‘s Social Charity Index 100 used information from JustGiving this year to add an extra dimension to the scoring process.

And so it was that I was very happy to see that Dogs Trust rose from 22nd to 6th, and, with the caveats above in mind, got a real buzz. To be clear: 22nd was nice. 22nd was lovely. 22nd out of the many great causes that do new and interesting and – best of all – effective things online was happily respectable. But top ten? After giants like Cancer Research and the hard and fast British Heart Foundation? That makes me feel a whole new level of pride in the hard work our digital team and all the other teams we work with have put in this past year.

For me, what’s really defined the last 12-18 months has been the greater ownership of digital media throughout the whole organisation. When I joined Dogs Trust in 2008, I needed to do a lot of looking for stories and coaxing them out of people. Now a key part of my community management is managing the flow of information coming at me from 18 regional centres and a plethora of head office departments. The digital team is part of discussions earlier and earlier in the process. I hear from several centres every day – here’s something for Facebook, for Twitter, for YouTube, for our centre pages, for Pinterest – and it makes me smile hugely when I get one of those emails with “I’ve got this mad idea…” in it.

One of the things we were always clear about was that we, as digital bods, might be specialists and might inhabit the digital world 24/7, but we were not – are not – gatekeepers to that. Facilitators, advisors, content shapers, yes. Exclusive creators and final arbiters? Never.

Of course it didn’t take going up in some charity rankings to make me aware of how we’ve grown, or what we’ve achieved. But it’s nice to be able to see it laid out in such a straightforward way. And it’s certainly given me a boost going into Hill & Knowlton’s sold-out Social Media Week London panel tomorrow on Secrets of Community Management, which I am delighted to be part of.

Take a look at the full 100 in the Guardian’s Voluntary Sector Network blog, or read more and access the full report at Visceral Business.

(Though, take note, Graun. That is not an infographic; it’s just a chart.)

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Great British Chefs: Summertime, Action Against Hunger and Blogging!

I’m really very excited, as my very first post for Great British Chefs has appeared on their blog today! Being me, I managed to combine social media and food in a post, asking about the future of food programming and the role of platforms like Twitter in developing the competition and campaigning side of things.

I consider myself extremely privileged to have now appeared on four sites I regularly enjoy reading (BitchBuzz, Bea Magazine, The F Word and now GBC), talking about all my favourite things.

And speaking of GBC, campaigning and privilege, have you downloaded the new Summertime app yet? You should, because it’s ace.  One of the things I really love about GBC apps is the emphasis on really beautiful design; I don’t think I’ve ever actually made anything from Feastive which is not a failing of the app’s, but entirely my own; still, I could look at it all day. Plus I think I’ve mentioned before – about four million times – what a Wareing fangirl I am, and his recipes appear on both. But what’s really special about Summertime, apart from its current relevance, is that it was developed in partnership with Ocado which has allowed GBC to donate all the proceeds to Action Against Hunger. It’s priced at £1.99, of which at least £1.20 goes to the charity. Just £36 can provide a month’s supply of therapeutic nutritional products (such as Plumpy’nut, for example) to nurse a severely malnourished child back to health. That’s maybe thirty app downloads – and of course there’s nothing stopping you heading to their website to donate too.

Food! Technology! Non-profits! Blogging! It’s a Christmassy day in August. And now I’m off to write a review of Brave for BitchBuzz, which means two more of my very favourite things in the world: reviews and Disney.

Bloody hell, I’m a lucky woman.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Ramona and the Great Toddler Toothbrushing Wars

Excuse me while I indulge in some blogging that is really only going to be of interest to anyone who has primary caregiving duty for a teeny, tiny person. But I dare to believe that to those people this might actually be a worthwhile read.

See, parenting is one of the very few cases where anecdotal evidence can actually be helpful. Of course, only to a point – you have to then apply what you’ve learned to your own child, who is both exactly the same as and completely different from every other child, but sometimes just knowing another parent was in the same leaky, rickety boat and managed (even temporarily) to shift to a shiny new seaworthy dinghy is all you need to feel a lot better. So here goes.

Having politely complied with having her teeth brushed since they first started coming through, around 11 months, it wasn’t until around 22 months that any issues with toothbrushing flared up. First it was wanting to do it herself, but then not wanting to do it. Then it was complaining that her gums hurt (understandable; she’s not got all those teeth yet). Then “my tongue hurts!” and refusing to even do the bit of the process she’d always approached with some gusto: eating the toothpaste. Some nights she’d be okay, some not, and it gradually got worse.

For a while we ended up basically having to brush by force, which made me feel like a rotten, rotten parent who was creating more fear around toothbrushing instead of less. I reached my limit on about the third occasion on which I had to resort to this, when afterwards she sniffled at me that “I cried and said no but Mummy brushed my teeth.” The words sent absolute shivers down my spine – what the Hell was I teaching her?  Things were going to change, starting the next night.

I called out for advice on Twitter, and got the following recommendations:

  • Nicer tasting toothpaste (I suspected myself this might help – perhaps the Colgate Milk Teeth was just too minty and was burning her tongue? I find the same with some grown-up toothpastes).
  • A reward chart (too young?)
  • Telling her she wouldn’t ever be allowed sugary things to eat or drink again (I don’t think she has the concept of consequences that aren’t absolutely immediate down well enough for this one; also, it’s impractical as I’m not the only one who feeds her).
  • Funny songs / rituals around the toothbrushing – brushing toys’ teeth (she also brushes their eyes, noses and ears…), applying toothpaste herself etc.

In the end, I went for a combination of the first and last. Ashley brought home some Cars-themed “fruit punch” flavoured toothpaste which, to my mint-honed gnashers, tastes absolutely vile and sickly, and smells it too. Ramona squeezed a little on her finger and made me taste it first (small empress that she is), and then hesitantly popped some in her mouth while I made effusive yummy noises.

“Mmmm, yummy,” I prompted.

“Mmmm, yucky,” she replied.

Still, curiosity had got the better of her – particularly as the toothpaste is a deep blue instead of boring white – and she kept sampling it until we had to risk a big, waily tantrum taking it away.

The next couple of nights were a bit hairy, as she much preferred applying the toothpaste to her finger than her toothbrush, but we worked out a deal whereby if she brushed her teeth thoroughly herself using the brush, her reward could be a small glob of toothpaste on her finger as a treat to munch on. She started requesting that I sing one of her flavour-of-the-month songs at the same time, and that’s become part of the ritual too: “Mummy will sing X while you brush your teeth… oh, good brushing! Now you can have a bit on your finger.”

To try and cement this progress and add more fun to proceedings, I treated her to a new toothbrush today after a visit to the Disney Store (during which I was very proud to note she behaved impeccably). Near bedtime I produced the surprise from my bag and she carefully examined her new Mickey brush, which flashes a red light for two minutes to aid brushing. She’s still a bit small for that feature to be anything but a fun game, but she carried on intermittently chewing the brush / brushing her teeth right through all our bedtime lullabies, only surrendering the brush to actually get into bed.

I’m keeping my fingers tentatively crossed that a combination of a more palatable paste and creating more fun around the brushing itself has done the trick… let’s wait and see.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Chinwag & Our Social Times Facebook Marketing 2012: My thoughts

On Wednesday, I went along to Chinwag and Our Social Times’ Facebook Marketing conference. The main reason for attending was, as you might have guessed, to find out more about Edgerank.

Running Dogs Trust’s Page puts us in quite an enviable position, numbers-wise, given the community has swelled to over 440,000 people entirely organically; it was 1,000-strong when I started at the charity in 2008, as the Page had been there – well ahead of many other UK non-profits – since December 2007. We’ve seen every single iteration of the Pages structure. Numbers are, clearly, not everything, and they certainly don’t guarantee engagement, but they do add a certain amount of serendipity, shall we say, and give us more options for more organic growth than someone starting out now in such a saturated environment.

Still, with Facebook restricting the number of people who see posts, the jig is up. We always aimed to create quality content, but now Facebook is basically throwing down the gauntlet and demanding it. Which, though it’s a cold-shower style reminder that the community of people like you that you and your team helped build doesn’t actually belong to you, is actually a very welcome challenge. Tools are just tools – Facebook is not the objective – but each one has its rules and its culture, and if you’re going to demand attention on a busy, crowded platform, you’d better have a good reason for it.

Beyond getting some tips to improve content – or at least reassurance that we’re starting to think about it in the right kinds of ways – I also wanted to know more about Facebook ads and using them judiciously around certain campaigns or issues.

So, my real stand-outs / takeaways from the day:

  • Hearing directly from Andy Pang of Facebook was excellent. Although he didn’t say anything I couldn’t have guessed, and a lot of it was an understandable sales pitch for the kind of metrics and campaign success Facebook claims to be able to achieve, it was actually really good confirmation that I have the right understanding of where Facebook is going. Sometimes what seems obvious isn’t, and here it’s nice to know that things are exactly as they seem. Facebook is looking to get us to treat our communities with respect, create fantastic content and then to pay them to help properly disseminate it, and that really is all there is to it.
  • Dom Dwight of Yorkshire Tea gave a presentation that was so on-brand it was actually funny: personable, warm, entertaining. More importantly, he was willing to talk about content that does and doesn’t work. We’ve known for a while that video viewers are more demanding and have a shorter attention span than ever, and I think that – like YT – we need to consider better ways to get our video messages across. In common with every other organisation, we’ve had to undertake our own little culture shift internally as new technologies emerge, and we’ve had the absolute privilege of getting a lot of our front-line centre staff on board over the last couple of years. They’re amazing, and we want to do them proud, so we need to give them even more tools and tips to help us help them.
  • We Are Social‘s Tom Ollerton, talking about Heinz, was also great at picking apart a certain level of detail beyond ‘this was really cool’, by bringing up specific errors that helped them through the various iterations of Facebook Campaign (eg always send an email confirmation if you’re giving away a product!).
  • Hearing about the thinking behind Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and their Thanks a Million campaign and getting insight into Richard Ayers work with Manchester City FC and the BFI covered a huge range of interaction, from the conceptually simple (though expensive) to online engagement that comes from building slower offline community relationships. It was nice to see a wide range of community size, reach and budget. In a funny way, it did come across how it’s so much easier to be simple when you have a lot of money to put into it.

And the things I would have liked to see more of:

  • A couple of people I was chatting to agreed that a greater focus on ads and the difference in performance between different kinds of ads would be good. A few people mentioned that social elements got much better click rates and brand recall rates (ie if your friend’s name is in the post, you’re more likely to remember / buy), but perhaps a break-out session on the nitty gritty of sponsored posts vs other forms of advertising would be helpful in the future.
  • There was a LOT going on, and some variation in format beyond presentation and panel would probably help the day become less of a blur towards the end. The “quick-fire” agency case studies were ten-fifteen minutes from each one, and fraction dry  – not a criticism of the speakers at all, just perhaps not the ideal format. I think throwing in a Pecha Kucha type session there, or perhaps splitting up groups into smaller break-outs that allowed more interaction from the audience would be idea.
  • 22 speakers… 6 women (one of whom had a seriously curtailed piece due to timing issues). One speaker with an ethnic background other than White British. All speakers aged 25-45. There are so many interesting and amazing people in this field, that – without taking anything away from the uniformly excellent people we heard from – a little diversity would go an awfully long way…

And yes, I did put most of this – praise included – on my feedback form, rather than just waiting to blurt it all out online. Under my real name, too. So there.

All-in-all, I did feel it was worthwhile attending and, on top of the individual tips I took away, I had a mental list and scribbled notes* under the general heading of WAYS TO MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER AND BE GENERALLY BRILLIANT OMG. We all need a little kick up the backside now and then, and seeing the great work that other people are doing online is an excellent way to self-administer it.

*During Tom’s presentation, I wrote down a quick-fire list of 10 off-the-top-of-my-head, fun, ridiculous, it might never work ideas and everyday “we could do this right now” suggestions and I’ve already brought up three of them in the office. I was actually listening to Tom at the same time. I’m quite impressed by my bit of multitasking there, and recommend that you try the same yourself if you haven’t brainstormed like that recently. Preferably not while someone else is talking, cos that’s just plain rude. I mean, really.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Reflections on Ramona: 23 months (The Disney Edition)

Honestly, I’m not sure how much this is going to be about Ramona and how much this is going to be about shopping. All of this happened today, so it’s all kind of rolled into one in my head, and I don’t have the inclination to separate it into two posts.

You can cut straight to the shopping if you prefer – it’s where the photos start. First, Ramona:

My tiny Pickle is not so tiny anymore – of course, she hasn’t been for a while. I’m occasionally blindsided by how weird it isn’t to have proper conversations with her, and this week we even had to start introducing the idea of naughty steps and consequences for bad behaviour that haven’t really made sense before. As with most children she is blissfully angelic and unconscionably demonic, generally within the same ten minutes. As I often say, I wouldn’t swap her forthright knowledge of what she wants, and her determination for getting it, for any kind of deferential wallflowery, but it would be lovely if she didn’t turn the former on me quite so often…

Biting is occasionally becoming an issue where it never was before, and after a particularly painful one in the middle of a tantrum today I got seriously miffed. Rather than stay in the room and lose my temper, I plopped her down, summoned her dad and left to cool off. I still felt bad, because I know it was a punishment for her to be separated from me (how arrogant that sounds! But that’s motherhood for you…), but I thought that was better than me behaving like an idiot in her presence. I came back down after a few minutes, she apologised, we had a massive cuddle and talked about why we don’t bite, and all was well.

And actually, that was the low point in what was a really impressive day for her. (Here’s where the Disney stuff starts too). We popped to Westfield, and she does love to visit the Disney Store, but last time we had to tear Mickey from her vice-like grip and cart her, wailing, out of the House of Mouse. This time, I did some preparatory groundwork, talking about not touching, only looking, and not being able to take things home. I was still prepared for a possible meltdown, but none came. She padded about happily, keeping her sticky paws to herself, identified her various friends – “Mickey! Daisy! Don-old! Goo-feeee!” – and was then content to leave after a few minutes, with a smile on her face. We rode up and down some elevators, and she even let me do a bit of shopping…

So, the upshot is I now have five Uniqlo / Disney t-shirts. It started with the bow one I wear in the photos on this very blog, and then I bought another four today. In my defence they are just £7.90 each, and fit me really well. They’ve got a really long body, which I often find is a huge problem with t-shirts – I had to stop buying from Threadless, because they looked like they were cutting me in half as I’m both tall and generous of belly – and the designs are a little bit more like what you get in Disney Parks, than what you get in the Disney Store. They’re also quite generously sized. I’m an M&S 14, and I comfortably fit the Medium.

Here they are:

These two are from the Uniqlo Uncovered range. They’re very slightly longer, and have a textured background colour, and you’ll find them on hangers in the shop. They also have “Uniqlo Uncovered” in smallish caps across the upper left hand side of the back of the shirt.

These two are from the standard Uniqlo Disney range, which you find on the shelves. Lots of these designs come in a range of background colours (for example, the lemon yellow Minnie bow one I’m wearing in the photos is also available in pink, as is the blue t-shirt in this photo).

And here’s me looking like a classic doofus in the mirror in the Snow White one.

In spite of my enthusiastic acceptance of the WDW ride’s overdue retirement, I still have a lot of love for Disney’s first feature length film, and I’m a sucker for a castle.

(The teapot necklace, by the way, is from Jelly Button Jewellery, which I absolutely love).

Naturally, the quirky attention to detail is typical of both Disney and a Japanese brand, and extends even to the delightfully cheesy labels:

Between every once upon a time and every happily ever after lies a fabled kingdom of art and imagination. Journey to this magical place, together with Disney and UNIQLO, and discover the charming characters, faraway places and treasured artwork of the world’s favorite storytellers. After all, you’re never too old to believe that dreams really do come true.

Love it. Love it all. And I especially love how it’s easier and easier to be a Disney fan and get the news and the fun stuff without actually being able to afford to go to WDW (I don’t love that last bit so much).

To top it all, Ramona started singing along to It’s a Small World today, though she’s loved the song since she was tiny. I actually started crying, to Ash’s amusement.

There are probably people out there who would be absolutely horrified that I was so pleased and proud, but I think I can cope with their disapprobation.

And now, back to our scheduled messages.

I am finding that I’m enjoying the toddler phase quite a lot more than I thought I would, while at the same time finding it terrifying and stressful and exhausting. I just really like being able to get to know Ramona’s personality now that she’s showing it in spades. She keeps me on my toes, bringing up things I thought she’d forgotten or not understood, and thoughtfully repeating back to me what she thinks about it all.

We occasionally find ourselves at loggerheads, but I am determined to make sure to do my sworn duty as a parent and behave like the (literally) bigger person. I won’t let it drag on, I won’t just get tangled up in being a grumpy bugger and I will always be sure to end the day with stories, snuggles and cuddles. The last thing she hears every night that I’m the one to put her to bed is “I love you”, and I tell her about a million times a day, as does Ash. To have her unexpectedly pootle over from her blocks or toys and give a hug and a dazzling smile before announcing “I yuv you!” cuts straight to the heart every time.

Plus, to my completely biased and inexpert mind, the kid is absolutely freakin’ brilliant when it comes to speaking. I do wish I could erase “I want…” from her vocabulary, but with prompting she is aware of the uses of “please” and “thank you”. She gets jokes, such as when I pretended there was a monster behind me and it turned out to be her, and runs around shouting things like “Mummy thought it was a monster but it was you!” (she still generally mixes up “me” and “you”, endearingly). She’s not quite so brilliant with names of relatives she doesn’t see often, but then neither am I. That’s when you get a situation like this:

Ouma, pointing at Auntie Linda: “Ramona, who’s that lady?”
Ramona: “Uncle Bernard.”

Which has a brilliance all its own, frankly.

I’m not sure how I’m going to get my head around having a two year old, but it ought to get all straightened out in my mind by this time next year.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

What constitutes a PR disaster? My perspective on Argyll and Bute

It took just 24 hours for Twitter to catch alight, the ban to be reversed and a proliferation of ‘bad PR’ posts to spring up – most of them packed with good advice, and worth reading, mind. But I can’t help thinking that when we all leap on the latest outrage, we’ve sometimes lost sight of the actual extent of people power through social media. It is tremendously impressive at times, but sometimes, I think, we congratulate ourselves too warmly and too soon.

Is anyone still boycotting Poundland for its allegedly anti-poppy stance? Nestle already had plenty of PR issues – was anyone permanently convinced by the KitKat logo page hijack? Is Habitat finding it impossible to recruit interns and suffering as a result? Or, to put it bluntly: is anyone’s bottom line permanently affected by a social media storm?

That’s a serious question. I’d love to see case studies where people power has permanently changed things long term for a business (aside from the News of the World – the backing of legal wrangling tends to help make your point). I suspect that there are some cases, but also that the biggest, brashest, brightest storms more or less died without a trace, remembered and dredged up mainly by social media pros – like me, in fact.

I wince when I see slow, reactionary and arrogant reputation management because, well, it’s slow, reactionary and arrogant. I think you should fix things – and not act stupidly in the first place, as the council clearly did – because they should be fixed, not solely for economic reasons (although for any business or charity, that is a good reason). But in the end, it would have made no difference to the coffers or workings of Argyll and Bute council if they’d just done nothing and stuck to their daft line. Because they’re a council. Are people going to refuse to pay their council tax? Not buy or rent a house there? Withdraw their kids from Martha’s school? Of course not.

What does worry me is that there might have been a human cost, both for Martha and for people being harangued or treated badly either by fellow council staff or members of the public trying to show their support; I do think this should be a major consideration, because I can’t think what’s more important than people. But, again, it wouldn’t have lasted long.

And, of course, many have shown their marvellously subversive human nature by raising £2,000 while the blog was allowed and active and, at last count, nearly£50,000 in protest. Which is definitely good news for Mary’s Meals.

My point is this: of course spokespeople, PRs and community managers should be responsive, intelligent and, above all, possess some compassion and consideration when dealing with outcries and complaints. They should not get heavy with the ban hammer, or rush out poorly-considered statements. But I also don’t think we should get carried away with declaring crises, disasters or catastrophes. 

I like to think I do my job well, because I consider each and every individual whose issue is sorted out or who feels closer to us as a result of interaction online important – I genuinely care. But I also do my job well because I understand that there’s a bigger picture. Argyll and Bute can’t shrug and say “oh well, we did our best”, because they didn’t, but they can say “oh well”. Now, that’s an important difference (you should always do your best) but it’s not going to have a tremendously different outcome in this case. The great skill of the community manager, one that we all have to work at improving every day, is understanding when to adjust the lens. Argyll and Bute did it embarrassingly late, but their critics didn’t really do it at all.

The other issue is, of course, social media’s role in turning slacktivism (which I think it unfairly denigrated, at least for its short-term effects) into longer term activism. If this has inspired just one person to tackle poor provision at their own council then that’s great.

In the end, the learnings from this, as far as I’m concerned, are pretty much the same as they have been from every other case study of its type:

  • Don’t be stupid
  • When you stop being stupid, everyone will forget about it, and you can get on with things
  • Again, don’t be stupid

Or, I guess, summed up in one more positive assertion: be human, with all that entails.